$800K in revenue from 6-7 deep-research county deals
The golden list does not exist. Public records are public, so the edge is pulling them from the county first and out-working everyone on owners nobody can reach.
About
Dominic and Mark run Florida Sell Now, a Florida wholesaling company built on county records and deep owner research. They started with bandit signs and a coffee shop call list, then moved the operation onto DataSift in 2021. Five years later they run a team of about 20 and are expanding into Texas and Miami.
Operating market
Southwest Florida
Favorite features
The Challenge
Dominic and Mark started Florida Sell Now with sweat equity and almost no capital. Dominic was fresh out of college. Mark was still in college, stacking chairs at a beach hotel. They placed yellow bandit signs at busy intersections in the early morning hours. Then they posted up at a coffee shop and cold called a PropStream list all day.
The lists kept letting them down. Mark pulled tax delinquent records, then heard owners say they had paid their taxes months ago. For two years the pair hunted a golden list nobody else was calling, convinced that was where the deals hid. When Mark first saw a DataSift webinar in 2021, the platform felt like a whole other language, complex and complicated. He asked Dominic for a couple of months to figure it out anyway.
What They Built
County records pulled before the list providers update
Mark went straight to the source. Virtual assistants check county records every single day: tax delinquents, code violations, liens, pre-probate filings. The rows land in a spreadsheet, get filtered, skip traced, and tagged, then upload to DataSift. They started with two or three Southwest Florida counties, including Lee and Charlotte. Mark keeps the playbook honest: 'It's basically whatever's in the first to market challenge.' The point is beating other buyers, and the list providers, to the record.
This isn't just a list. This is data, and data is very very important here.
Cold callers trained to hold a real conversation
Seven full-time cold callers work the records from Egypt, Mexico, and the Philippines, three to five attempts each. Florida Sell Now trains them hard on what each list means. A pre-probate call does not stall when someone says the owner was their dad.
Our cold callers can actually have a conversation with them and not just, 'Oh, okay. Here's a lead.'
A research desk for the owners nobody reaches
When a strong record survives three to five attempts with no contact, callers post it to a shared Slack channel. The research team, led by Holly, spends 15 to 20 minutes on a first pass: relatives, neighbors, co-owners, obituaries. Private investigators pick up the dead ends. The network now runs the other way too. Sheriff deputies and code enforcement officers send them properties nobody maintains. After the pair spoke at Florida's statewide code enforcement meetup, 15 to 20 officers stayed in contact.
A brand sellers find before the first call
The company name carries the marketing, not the founders. A YouTube channel breaks down their most difficult deals, a TV ad runs in Southwest Florida, and SEO plus Google reviews back it up. Sellers have told them they researched every company in the area and picked the one with the best reviews. Private lenders watch the same videos and see actual operators before committing money.
Before and After
Before DataSift
- Achieved Data Clarity
- Consistent Deal Flow
- Inconsistent Deal Flow
- Poor Marketing Flow
- Little Data Clarity
- Relied On Google Sheets
- Consistent Deal Flow
- Data Clarity / Organization
- Wholesales, Flips And Does Retail
- Strong Marketing Flow
- Didn't Understand Data Management
- Strong Real Estate Agent
- Wanted To Break Into Wholesaling But Didn't Know How
- Healthy Scale
- Data Driven Decisions
- Consistent Deals
- Strong Marketing Flow
- Inconsistent
- Little Data Insight
- Unorganized Bulk Marketing
- Strategic Focus on Niches
- Enhanced Lead Flow and Certainty
- Streamlined Marketing Process
- Efficient Use of Data
- Direct Mail & Deep Prospecting
- Broad, Unfocused Strategy
- Inconsistency in Results
- Dependency on Luck
- Marketing Clarity
- 6 Figure Months
- High Deal Volume
- Strong Marketing Flow
- Proper Data Management
- Weak Marketing Flow
- Poor Data Management
- Lack of Focus
- Manual Efforts
- Successful Scale
- Total Data Clarity
- Clear Marketing Approach
- Large Deal Spreads
- Improper Data Management
- Poor Marketing Method
- Inconsistent Deal Flow
- Strong Marketing Flow
- Clear Data Management
- Clear Data Management
- Successful Scale
- Many ways to close deals
- Large deal spreads
- Poor data management
- Unable to scale properly
- Poor marketing flow
- Smaller Deal Spreads
- Increased Deal Volume
- Platform Utilization
- Realtor Collaboration
- Funding Efforts
- Lots Of Deals
- Data Driven Decisions
- Strong Marketing Flow
- Sales And Marketing Clarity
- Poor Data Management
- Poor Marketing Flow
- Relied On Bulk Marketing
- Lack of Clarity
- Automated Acquisition
- Strong Marketing Flow
- Data Driven Decisions
- Structured Follow-ups
- Increased Lead Generation
- Achieved Sales And Marketing Clarity
- Manual Acquisition Processes
- Ineffective Marketing Flow
- Minimal Lead Insights
- Poor Follow Up Flow
- Inconsistent Lead Generation
- Lacked Sales And Marketing Clarity
After DataSift
- A VA Works Every No-Contact Lead in DataSift
- Daily Follow-Ups Run From the Sift Line Tasks
- Nine Deals Under Contract After the Stacked Niche Switch
- Cold Callers Sent KPIs by Hand Outside the System
- Expensive PPC Spend With No Return
- Follow-Up Leads Vanished Into an Abyss in the Old CRM
- 60,000 Records a Quarter Feeding His Bulk Callers
- Four Contracts Signed in 10 Days
- Three Deals a Week, Two Weeks Running
- First Direct to Seller Push in 30 Years of Business
- A $10,000 Mail Campaign That Produced Nothing
- 15 Years Buying Only From the MLS and Wholesalers
- New lender agreed 12 days after the first collapsed
- $105,696 net profit after closing costs
- Nine properties contracted at $360K, sold at $450K
- Hard money lenders would not lend on rural portfolios
- Local title companies refused assignments and passthroughs
- Seller would only sell one house, priced far over appraisal
- Still Runs on a $500 Monthly Budget
- An $85K Deal Off a 50-Name Stacked List
- 13 Contracts in Six Weeks From 250 Prospects
- About $40K Spread Across Six Months, Still Behind
- Five Contracts in a Row Fell Through
- Shotgun Lists Across Too Many Zip Codes
- One Contract Per 25-35 Leads, Half the Typical Ratio
- Each Caller Brings 16-18 Leads a Week
- 50,000 Free County Records Called on a Four-Month Cycle
- Two Partners Dialing Everything Themselves From 2017 to 2019
- VA Cleaned Every County Download by Hand in Excel
- Another Blanket ListSource Pull Whenever the Pipeline Ran Dry
- Same county-data system expanding into Texas and Miami
- $800K in revenue from six or seven deep-research deals
- About 20 people across data, calling, research, and sales
- PropStream tax delinquent lists arrived after owners had already paid
- Two years hunting a golden list that did not exist
- Bandit signs at intersections, cold calling all day from a coffee shop
- Four deals closed faster than his first three
- 8,200 dials and 25 leads in one November
- Four VAs running one calling and texting protocol
- Generic YouTube advice with no sequence to follow
- Back at a sales job four months after going full time
- Spent $35,000 on marketing with zero return
- About 35 Leads Per Deal Across 347 Total Leads
- $253K In Cash And Equity From One Package Deal
- 40 Properties Wholesaled In Under Four Months
- 12-Hour Days And A 45-Minute Commute
- No Deals Found Through Realtors, MLS, Or Craigslist
- Cold Calling From A Printed Spreadsheet In The Parking Lot
- Pulls Nearly All His Data Straight From the County
- Runs Jacksonville Virtually on $1,000 a Month
- Locked a Contract Four Days After His January Restart
- Scattered Across SMS, Facebook Ads, and a Website
- Partner's $2 an Hour Caller Hit a 1% Contact Rate
- Called Lists Three Times Then Trashed Them
- 50,000 sqft warehouses in negotiation, one to two leads daily
- $59,000 spread on his first big wholesale deal
- Every eviction filed in New Jersey, worked daily
- Old CRM buried callers in highlight and right-click drama
- Phenomenal months, then crickets for months
- Overnight pharmacy shifts, 84 hours in a single week
- Knows the playbook works and is replicating it
- First off-market contract four months after starting
- $250,000 assignment fee on deal one
- Weak cash position after funding ground-up projects
- Questioned whether real estate money was even real
- Two years spending on development deals, not making much back
- $40,000 month tracking with fixed costs
- Five first to market deals since April
- Probate filings pulled daily in multiple counties
- Two mail campaigns, response rates he did not like
- Costs fluctuated month to month with list spend
- Custom Podio build, broad absentee and vacant lists
- Owner buried beside her son after two years unclaimed
- Runs every heir search solo now
- Five heirs found, contacted, and signed across Texas
- Needed a specialist for her first deep heir search
- Paper records only, fathers listed by initials
- Probate leads dead-ended with no findable heirs
- Every No Recycled On A Two-Year Rehash Cycle
- Three VAs Clean Data Before A Single Dial
- Three First To Market Niche Filters Worked Daily
- Loose Onboarding And Under-Corrected Bad Hires
- Team Swung From Large To Small To Solo
- Broad Marketing Across Every Niche At Once
- Mornings and evenings back with his family
- 8 person crew handles whole projects in sets of two
- 40+ properties across three portfolios in about six months
- Afraid to take on payroll and a crew
- The bottleneck on his own projects
- Software job eight to five, real estate five to midnight
- 55% Answer Rate On One-By-One Click To Call
- Free County Data Replaced Every Paid List
- $45K Fee Closed One Week After The Callback
- Podio, Slack, And Multiple VAs, No Traction
- 30,000-Record Lists Dialed Two Or Three Times Through
- At Least $40K Wasted On Lists And VAs
- Four Marketing Attempts on a Couple of Lists
- A Three-Person Team at About $1,800 Cost Per Contract
- Almost Two Years Nomadic Across Asia, Europe, and the Middle East
- Behind a Jacksonville Desk 95 Percent of the Time
What changed
A couple of years in, Mark was trying to pull a code enforcement list in a difficult county and hit one record. The file read: owner deceased, probate never started, grass overgrown, junk car in the driveway. The property sat close to his house, so he got in the car and drove by. It was completely overgrown. "That was basically my intuition saying, 'Hey, if we can just make contact with the right person, then this is going to be a deal.'" Florida Sell Now calls them intuitive deals now, and a whole department grew out of that one drive.
The Results
The first six or seven intuitive deals brought in about $800,000 in revenue. Spread across seven deals, that is roughly $115,000 each, and Dominic says typical size runs into the six figures. He pegs the pace at one intuitive deal every month or two, quality over quantity. The longest chase took two years of contact attempts before it closed. Volume channels keep running underneath, so the big deals never have to carry the company.
The operation itself is the before and after. Two founders placing bandit signs became a team of about 20: seven cold callers, a research desk, US acquisitions, a lead manager, a transaction coordinator, and a director of sales. A director of operations comes next, hired to push AI into research and follow-up. The same county-data system is already live in one Texas county, with West Palm open and Miami planned.
A lot of people give up because they just don't put enough repetition into this. They quit, you know, when they're almost at the finish line.
Get results like this. Start your free trial.
Related Stories
.avif)
What our users have to say
Get results like this. Start your free trial.
Common questions before you start
Is there a free trial?
Yes DataSift offers a 7 day free trial. In those 7 days you’ll receive all necessary materials to learn exactly how to leverage Sift in your company.
How much does DataSift cost?
Our lowest plan starts at $149 a month and our highest plan is $1250 a month.
How long does setup take?
Your account ships with the lead management default build already wired. Boards, statuses, tasks, automations — ready on day one. Add your team, import your data, and your lead manager can start working leads the same afternoon.
I'm coming from Podio, REsimpli, or Go High Level. Why switch?
Every CRM needs someone to move leads where they belong. The difference is what catches the misses. Most CRMs hand you an empty box and tell you to build it. DataSift ships with the workflow assembled — boards, statuses, tasks, and 26+ automations already wired. You're not paying for a database. You're paying for the system that already runs your lead management.
How do I migrate over my data from another CRM?
Contact our support team through our support chat and they will give you all necessary materials and information to make sure you get all of your data uploaded exactly how you want it.
Does DataSift work with my dialer?
Yes. Ready Mode, Smart Dialer, Call Tools, Smarter Contact, Aircall and Kixie connect directly. A wrong-number disposition in the dialer flips the phone status in DataSift in real time. A new-lead disposition fires the full Call New Lead sequence. Other dialers connect through CSV upload or Zapier.
